‘Beaten and bloody.’ Lured 15-year-old escapes from armed robbery, Washington cops say
A 15-year-old boy was taking the trash out at his mother’s apartment complex when two girls lured him into a vehicle in Washington, a news outlet reported.
Once inside the car, he was held at gunpoint and driven to another location in Auburn where three guys assaulted him, Auburn Police Department said in a Facebook post.
Video footage captured the attack, police said.
The suspects removed the 15-year-old’s clothes and stole his cellphone, police said. When the teen escaped, the group chased him.
But the teen found help from a woman parking her car, KOMO reported.
“I instantly opened the door and said ‘get in, get inside,’ and I noticed that he was beaten and bloody and shaking and crying and terrified,” Amanda Smart told KSTU.
The boy told Smart that one of the suspects said “shoot him in the leg” before he fled, the news outlet reported.
Police found the suspect’s car and saw the passengers run away from it, police said. But officers didn’t have probable cause to follow the suspects until shortly after, authorities said.
Then police said they tracked down the two female suspects with a police dogs.
The investigation is ongoing and investigators are working to identify the three other suspects.
Initially, police called the incident a kidnapping but later said the attack was an “orchestrated robbery.”
“If I could knock on every door on Lea Hill and tell every mom out there what had happened I would because I just want them to protect their babies,” Smart told KOMO.
This story was originally published October 27, 2021 at 2:43 PM with the headline "‘Beaten and bloody.’ Lured 15-year-old escapes from armed robbery, Washington cops say."
